The last life vest available for adherents of Tuwad na Daan (Crooked Path) — the former unlamented Tuwid na Daan (Straight Path) of outgoing President Benigno Aquino — is administration Liberal Party (LP) vice presidential bet CamSur Rep. Leni Robredo.
Robredo is a puppet on a string offered as a sacrificial lamb to save Aquino and his minions from coming charges of massive graft and corruption and gross incompetence.
With the campaign of its standard bearer Mar Roxas already crashing days before E-Day on May 9, the LP is on crisis mode, is no longer focused on saving Toto Mar, who has won a permanent franchise over the third or fourth spot in surveys for presidential preference by the Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia.
With the Roxas presidency doomed along with Korina Sanchez’s dream to be First Lady, the LP focus now is on how to make Robredo, Toto Mar’s running mate, win.
Robredo has to win as the next vice president, as insurance against the tsunami of karmas that would rain on Aquino and his minions after the dust of the May elections would have settled down.
The alarm bells for Aquino, his Cabinet and LP members are sounding off an eerie post-election scenario: charges of graft and plunder, grand thievery and incompetence against the Tuwad na Daan promoters.
There is no vengeance here; only making people answer for their sins to the nation.
The post-election firing range is a colorful mix of shooting ducks: Aquino as the president who should not have been one; Roxas and his incompetence as ex-Interior secretary; Budget sec Butch Abad as the engineer of the illegal and anomalous Disbursement Acceleration Program and other equally anomalous billion-pesos Tuwad na Daan programs and projects; Jun Abaya and the MRT scam; Jess Singson for malodorous public works; Dinky Aoliman for rotten Yolanda relief aid and missing social welfare funds; LP legislators fattened by PDAF and scam quees Napoles and other Aquino minions who voraciously lived off corruption in the present administration.
Right now, Aquino and his Tuwad na Daan minions could be prepping up for the saddest part of their political life: packing up their bags to give way to a new administration — a thousand and one percent reality with the Roxas presidency as dead as a dodo.
With Rodrigo Duterte of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino/Laban (PDP/Laban) leading his rivals with a wide margin in recent surveys, a Duterte presidency is but a breath away.
The vigilant public has its eyes on cheating that could change the tide of the looming Duterte presidency.
Duterte has vowed that if elected President the biggest cannon of his administration would be fired at massive graft and corruption in government. We leave it to you to imagine the scene of the bloody massacre.
This early the exit door for Aquino and the LP is already wide open. There should be a salvation road in wake of Duterte’s vow to go after the grafters and the corrupt.
There should be a comfort zone, who is Robredo, for Aquino and his minions when the guns start firing.
And so Aquino and his LP, with the Roxas presidency in a state of premature doom, are now less concerned about Toto Mar’s fate.
Toto Mar’s debacle in the presidential race, after all, is already written on the wall.
Before and all along through the campaign period, Toto Mar was dogged by nightmares: Yolanda, SAF 44, MRT & LRT, Tuwad na Daan, etc., etc. And Korina!
Toto Mar’s word war with Duterte is a classic example of a fumbling “idiot, stupid and crazy” presidential wannabe tangling with somebody who has the grit and brawn fit to be president.
The LP leadership apparently was confident early on that Toto Mar would win the race. They also thought that Toto Mar’s over-zealous defense and his vow to continue the program of Aquino’s Tuwad na Daan was his ticket to presidential stardom.
Alas and alack! Tuwad na Daan turned out to be the nail that sealed Toto Mar’s political doom.
Blind and out of touch of reality, Toto Mar and his handlers failed to see red flags: that Tuwad na Daan in the public eye has become the flagship symbol of the incompetence of the Aquino administration.
The more that Toto Mar talked about Tuwad na Daan, the more that he earned public disdain and ridicule.
Who would vote a president who promises a governance that stands on the platform of a tested and proven incompetence and corruption like Aquino’s Tuwad na Daan?
But back to Robredo.
With the Roxas presidency rolling in mud in the garbage drain, there has to be a life saver. And so the LP decided to forget Roxas and focus its energy on Robredo.
Several days to E-Day, the LP hand is seen in rigged surveys that showed Robredo miraculously shooting up in the ratings game to overtake Senator Bongbong Marcos and Senator Chiz Escudero in the latest vice presidential survey.
The Aquino administration, for its part, is pouring all its energy and resources to make Robredo win. And did we notice that Robredo has been campaigning of late without Toto Mar? This is an apparent strategy to avoid Robredo being dragged down by Toto Mar.
Aquino and the LP’s stake on Robredo is high. The puppet Robredo is their life saver.
Duterte has vowed that if elected President the biggest cannon of his administration would be fired at massive graft and corruption in government. Again, we leave it to you to imagine the scene of the bloody massacre.
So against this judicial extermination of the administration of the enemies of the people and thieves of public money, Aquino and the LP finds an “insurance” in the puppet Robredo as the sitting vice president to protect them.
However, that Robredo will win the election is wishful thinking. Her top-running score in the latest survey is nothing but a passing fancy and achieved by rigging by machination of the LP dirty tricks department.
From our perch, the presidential race at the homestretch would be a battle between Escudero and Marcos.
But even if, God forbids, Robredo wins, Aquino and his gang of thieving scalawags could not expect the lady vice president to protect them as they hallucinated she could against being locked in jail after the elections for their sins against the people.
To the simplistic and myopic view of Aquino and his thieving scalacawags, even if their crime involves massive thievery ang gross incompetence, they expect their puppet and collaborator Vice President Robredo to play snake charmer and with her beauty and tantalizing eyes mesmerize President Duterte into forgiving them.
Duterte may love women but he hates the grafters and the corrupt more.
And Robredo also campaigned on an anti-graft platform. She would be desecrating the memory of her late husband, Jesse Robredo, if she would meekly follow and play the role of a puppet designed for her by Aquino and the LP. If elected, Robredo said he would continue the campaign against corruption of her husband, who was the Interior secretary when he perished in a plane crash.
She also would betray the trust of the Filipino people who voted for her.
So she has to part ways with Aquino and his scalawags and help tighten the noose on their necks.
As vice president, Robredo would also have no influence on Duterte who has placed on his agenda a serious campaign against the corrupt and the inept alongside a campaign against criminality and drug lords.
If Duterte say he would shoot the corrupt, criminals and drug dealers, he would do it.
If he says he would dump their dead bodies into Manila Bay for the fish to feast on, he would do it.
If he says he would, if he wins the presidency, file charges and send to jail Aquino, Roxas and the rest of the Tuwad na Daan operatives linked to corruption, he would do it.
The future of the country rests on your vote in May.
You vote Robredo in this election and you could be electing a puppet of the Aquino administration and a potential conspirator to a cover-up of massive graft and corruption.
When Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr was 26, living in Hawaii after his father was deposed by a people power rebellion in February 1986, a first-hand account shows that he was privy to the Marcos deposits in the Swiss banks, particularly Credit Suisse. It is not clear if he knew the amounts involved but these were estimated at $10 to $20 billion, alleged to have been illicit wealth. Part of this has since been transferred to the Philippine government.
Deposed President Ferdinsnd Marcos assigned to Bongbong the task of coordinating with their contact in Credit Suisse to keep their funds intact.
Amid the over-spending allegations, YACAP Party-list Rep. Carol Jane Lopez and Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda, were quick to defend Roxas. They said Roxas “used his own money”.
Roxas 2014 Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) indicates a net worth of ₱ 202 million, according to the Inquirer. No other details were made public about his 2014 SALN declaration.
Roxas and the Mining Industry
A closer look at Roxas’ 2012 SALN shows that Roxas has a personal interest in the mining sector. His stockholdings, officially amounting to ₱ 120 million, include shares in seven mining companies, namely:
Roxas and his Campaign Planes
Bondoc of the Philippine Star reported Friday that private Cessna planes Roxas uses for his campaign sorties are wrapped in various anomalies. The aircraft are registered under Air Juan Aviation Inc., owned by a certain Francis Eric Gutierrez. These planes are also used to fly VP candidate Leni Robredo and the Liberal Party (LP) senatorial lineup..
A decade or so ago, environmental non-profit Caraga Watch formally sued SRMI for vastly exceeding its extraction limits, causing massive environmental damage.
A simple Google satellite image shows the extent of SRMI’s over-extraction and its effects on the otherwise pristine Tubay environment:
For example, MGB reported that for the year 2014, SRMI paid ₱45.3 million in royalties to Tubay’s Lumads, representing 1% of SRMI’s total mining review for that fiscal year. That is, SRMI 2014 revenues from their Tubay site were at ₱4.53 billion. The 2014 market rate was US$ 41 per ton.
Without batting an eye lash, Liberal Party standard bearer Mar Roxas has admitted his friendship with a billionaire miner, who had been investigated for illegal mining operation involving P28 billion worth of nickel ore. Eric Gutierrez is my friend, what’s wrong with that, said Roxas as Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte revealed that the billionaire miner and his business partner, Caloocan City Representative Edgar Erice, are bankrolling the campaign of Roxas.
Future of Mining in a Roxas Presidency
The story of Gutierrez’s SRMI is just a glimpse at how cozy the LP’s relations are with mining companies. Add the fact that LP’s Roxas is a shareholder in at least 7 mining companies, the future seems brighter in a Roxas presidency for SRMI and friends.
How exactly will a Roxas presidency benefit SRMI and friends?